The world needs new centres of knowledge beyond traditional Western capitals, Esra Albayrak, a Turkish sociologist, chair of the NUN Foundation’s Board of Trustees and daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said at the “World Decolonization Forum.”
Speaking at the opening of the two-day forum hosted by the NUN Education and Culture Foundation and Institute Social in Istanbul on Monday, Albayrak said the current international system had reached the limits of knowledge produced in cities such as Paris, London, New York and Amsterdam.
“The world now also needs new centres and the wisdom produced in Istanbul, Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Rabat, Cairo and Gaza,” she added.
The forum is examining the roots of global crises and the legacy of colonialism.
Albayrak said the gathering was not aimed at creating “another centre against the West” or imagining “a world without the West,” but rather encouraging a broader rethinking of global hierarchies.
“Decolonisation is also an open invitation for the West to free itself from the ‘master complex’ that has taken hold of it,” she said.
‘We propose discussing the burden of humanity’
She argued that global systems built around technological and cultural dominance were shaping younger generations in harmful ways. “Our children’s attention, imagination and memory have become raw materials for the continuity of the techno-colonial regime,” Albayrak said.
She also pointed to Gaza as evidence of a growing global questioning of the legitimacy of the current international order. “The dimensions reached after October 7 by the colonial occupation that has continued for decades in Gaza have led to a deep questioning in the conscience of peoples around the world regarding the moral and political legitimacy of the current international system,” she said.
Albayrak said the goal was not to reverse racial hierarchies, but to abandon the logic that created them altogether. “What we need is not to place the ‘burden of the black man’ against the ‘white man’s burden’ in a reactive way,” she said. “We propose discussing the burden of humanity.”
The forum also includes academic sessions, exhibitions and film screenings under themes related to decolonisation, culture and global justice.
An academic session following the opening featured sociologist Salman Sayyid.
The event has been organised in cooperation with Bogazici University, the Centre for Islamic Studies and universities from Malaysia, Argentina, Indonesia, South Africa, Russia, Britain and Qatar.
